It is hard to convince anyone they need to change when they think nothing is broken. The story of the emperor’s new clothes captures it. The whole court agreed the emperor was splendidly dressed. A child had to say he was naked.
New Zealand’s public service has the same problem. My recent report Who runs the country? argues that ministers should appoint their chief executives, with statutory protections for the career service below.
The public service keeps delivering examples of why the reform is needed.
Medsafe kept its second review of medicines approved overseas, despite a coalition commitment to drop it. The Ministry for the Environment kept its planning worldview, despite a mandate for property-rights reform. The Commerce Commission was meant to lose powers and now gains them.
Last week, emeritus professor Jonathan Boston published a critique calling the reform a “grave mistake.” Most of his piece argues that the New Zealand public service is broadly fine, that obstruction is occasional rather than structural and that the examples do not justify changes of this scale.
Boston is asking the right question. But he gets the answer wrong. If the public service is broadly fine, my proposal is unnecessary. If it is structurally unable to deliver what elected governments promise voters, no amount of fine-tuning at the margins will fix it.
Boston also raised more specific concerns about the proposal. He worried about nepotism risks, the loss of free and frank advice and the limits of any reform that does not touch Crown entities. Each is anticipated and addressed in the report itself.
On nepotism, my proposal includes qualification requirements, transparent appointments and parliamentary scrutiny rather than a free hand for ministers.
On free and frank advice, a statutory duty to object protects officials who raise legality concerns, with career protections shielding them from reprisal.
On Crown entities, the report explains why fixing the central machinery is the right place to start.
The question worth asking is whether New Zealand’s public service is delivering what elected governments promise. The cases say no, and they are not unique to this government.
If anyone has a better solution than mine, the country would benefit from hearing it. What it does not need is the assurance that nothing is broken.
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Oliver is the Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative. Before joining the Initiative, he was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, the Chief Economist at the Policy Exchange in London, and an advisor in the UK House of Lords.
Oliver holds a master's degree in economics and business administration and a PhD in Law from Bochum University in Germany.
Oliver is available to comment on all of the Initiative’s research areas.